A giant turtle
The other super sized patient I wanted to share with you from the recent large visitors to the hospital was a turtle. As some of you may know, either from older posts or close observation of some of the photos, I have two water turtles. They’re both female, both 25 years old, and they still lay eggs. 🙂 Anyway, so I have a soft spot for turtles, and there’s even a collection of stuffed animal turtles on top of my turtles’ tank. But none of those turtles match the size of the visitor to the hospital earlier this month!
Turtle actually had a pretty cool story. Here is what her person first wrote:
Hello To Whom It May Concern,
I am looking to get a childhood stuffed animal healed, I was pushed to donate it years ago when my family moved and by a twist of fate, recently ended up working at the institution it was donated to. It’s been a few years since the donation and in that time, kids have done a number on it. I have since gotten it back this past week after the people I donated it to no longer had need of it and would like to see it fixed up. It is an about three foot long and foot wide green sea turtle that needs to be cleaned up, have stuffing fixed up and replaced, and have new eyes put it.
Well, the first step, as always, was for me to see the turtle, and photos work well. Unfortunately, she was still in plastic to protect her (and her new home) from anything she might have caught in her years away, so there was an older photo of her, and then her bagged. :-\
It was enough to see her issues (lack of stuffing, blindness) and approximate size. We agreed a spa and new eyes would be the best treatment, and any small wounds not visible in the photos would get sewn up as well.
Fortunately, her person was only about an hour away, so he could bring her in person (for contactless drop off) because given her size, travel could have far exceeded treatment cost!
She started with unstuffing and a spa. No spa photos because when patients are that big, their spa photos just look like a pile of fabric, especially if there are no eyes as in Turtle’s case.
Once dry and partially restuffed, it was time to choose a style for her new eyes. Here were the three options:
Her person chose the last… a plastic eye with felt backing and lid. So her vision was restored and restuffing continued (it takes a LOT of stuffing for a patient her size). Here’s her heart with original stuffing going in:
And here are the first photos to judge chubbiness (so she had open seams so I could adjust):
Her person said she should be strong/dense enough to hold the weight of an adult human, so I added more stuffing, closed her up, and she was ready to go home. While she waited for her human to come get her, she made friends with one of my turtles:
You can really see how big she is here! My turtle is about 10″ long.
Turtle went home and is now happily ensconced back with her original family and friends:
Her person wrote “She’s better than I ever could have hoped!”
